2 Kings 16:1-6
"16 In the seventeenth year of Pekah the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. 2 Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God, as his father David had done,3 but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 4 And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.
5 Then Rezin king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, came up to wage war on Jerusalem, and they besieged Ahaz but could not conquer him. 6 At that time Rezin the king of Syria recovered Elath for Syria and drove the men of Judah from Elath, and the Edomites came to Elath, where they dwell to this day."
Ahaz had less excuse for his evil ways than even the kings of Israel in the north, for he at least had the example and memory of a good and faithful father and a grandfather who, although he came to grief through pride and arrogance, was nevertheless in his prime a man of God. One can almost sense the feeling of outrage and righteous indignation in the historian's mind as he underlines the extent of the king's iniquity with the word 'yea' in 3. It was little wonder that Rezin, king of Syria and Pekah of Israel came up against him. He invited the anger of the Lord by his wilful transgression. We are reminded of the words of the Shorter Catechism, 'Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.' To sin as he did, with such a background, and when he might have acted so differently, was asking for swift retribution, and it came. David once prayed, 'Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins', and he surely did so because he knew that they could call down upon him the speedy chastisement of God. Ahaz had everything in his favour - he could not even plead that family circumstances were against him. This is the real danger point - not that we should fall helplessly into sin but that when we might have, and could have, chosen differently, we deliberately chose evil. There is a considerable difference in the mind of God between a helpless victim of sin and a wilful rebel determined to do evil.